Analysis of the use of an accidental competency discourse as a reflective tool for professional placement students

Situated learning in professional practice is increasingly recognized as a key component of engineering curricula. One challenge in this context is to establish a reflexive link between the students' learning at university and their experiences in practice. This paper proposes the Accidental Competency discourse as an alternative tool to support students' experiential learning through reflection on critical learning events. The procedure was initially developed as a research tool to investigate competence formation in engineering students from a systems perspective. This paper presents the semi-structured focus group protocol and points to ways this can be implemented as a reflexive tool in co-operative learning. The description specifically focuses on the practicalities of facilitating an Accidental Competency discourse in focus groups with students. The Accidental Competency discourse was trialed in ten focus groups with engineering students. Initial data from participant feedback indicates that the procedure facilitated student reflection. On the basis of these results the benefits and limitations of the procedure in relation to other reflexive approaches are discussed. The paper concludes with an outlook on the implementation of the Accidental Competency discourse as an asynchronous online tool.